“We believe all these skills are poorly covered by traditional programs, but essential to improving youths’ ability to produce creative work in and out of school.”
Remix the City
- “REMIX the city” is an urban experience for youth that invites them to become more involved in their city by developing creative and digital skills.
- Youth will communicate stories that matter to them using video snippets and the language of web video.
- Designed by FabSpaces, the workshops are an evolution of the “photo-walk,” replacing the camera with a smartphone or tablet to create remixable content.
- The workshop teaches how to produce media for the digital age, using a custom mobile app to discuss aspects like Creative Commons licensing, sharing through social media, remix culture and video encoding.
- Contact: Gaby Avina at gaby@fabspaces.cc
Digi Story Making
- Hosted by Story Planet, Digi Story Making is a 12-week workshop series that helps youth use technology as an instrument for creativity.
- Mentors will help students express themselves through new tools and approaches to storytelling.
- The project will be youth-led, including the stories they choose to tell, underlying curiosities and passions, and tools participants use to shape and share their stories
- The project will culminate in youth-created digital stories, a public screening, and an online resource created using Mozilla’s Thimble tool for creating web pages.
- Contact: Joe Lasko at joelasko@gmail.com
Making Makers
- Working together, MakerKids, Kids Learning Code, TIFF and The Toronto Public Library will develop Technology Workshop Modules and Training Conferences for educators.
- These resources will be available online for download, and we will be featured at Toronto training conferences.
- This will give educators the tools they need to run technology workshops that deliver open-ended inquiry activities, going beyond demos and allowing youth to create something with purpose driven by their own vision.
- Contact: Laura Plant at laura@ladieslearningcode.com
“We believe that through the process of making and creating with technology, youth are encouraged to look at the world as something that can be actively changed — instead of simply acting as consumers.”
Wide Open Wednesdays
- Wide Open Wednesdays (WOW) is a creative platform that will launch in September as a series of monthly workshops spotlighting maker culture in the GTA, promoting its key principles of openness, sustainability and self-sufficiency.
- Drawing on the Textile Museum of Canada’s strengths as a participatory educational and exhibition space, WOW will create a community hub where digital media skills and physical making can come together, turning learners into co-designers and makers.
- Emphasizing intergenerational learning, WOW builds on the Museum’s commitment to being both “high touch” and “high tech,” supporting informal mentorship and interdisciplinary, co-creative participation from youth.
- The TMC’s Wide Open Studio will provide an ongoing exhibition space for the artistic and creative processes that result, with opportunities to explore and remix content created during the workshops.
- Contact: Susan Fohr sfohr@textilemuseum.ca
Sustainable Communities Tech Camp and Pop-ups
- The Golden Horseshoe Green Tech summer camp will provide 20 to 25 at-risk youth aged 9 to 14 in Hamilton’s North End with a free week-long Information and Communications Technology camp.
- In collaboration with St. Mary’s School in Hamilton and the Kiwanis Boys and Girls Club, the focus is on youth that show promise in computer and creative fields, primarily from low-income households and new Canadians.
- The main goal is to bring together the two themes of technology and environmental sustainability. Youth will be immersed in self-directed learning and critical thinking situations, developing a sense of community responsibility and learning about the importance of sustainability in their neighbourhood.
- GHGT will continue to offer connected learning opportunities to Hamilton youth through two “pop-up” events in September and November, with campers acting as peer mentors.
- Contact: Nick Longaphy at nicholas.longaphy@ghgt.ca